anti-choice data breach

An anti-abortion activist is facing a legal challenge from a British abortion provider after he set up a website using a similar name.

Eamonn Murphy, who runs an unregulated Dublin crisis pregnancy agency which has given out misleading advice, had already been sent a cease and desist letter by the HSE after setting up a website under the same name as the official My Options crisis pregnancy phone line.

Legal proceedings have been issued against the operator of a bogus website which is posing as the official HSE information service for women with unplanned pregnancies.

MyOptions.ie, which offers free support and gives details on how to access abortion services, was started by the HSE on January 1 when the new law on terminations came into effect. Soon after, anti-abortion campaigners set up a website using a similar name.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner and public health services agency are reportedly investigating how the private data of a patient who had an abortion may have landed in the hands of a harasser.

In an anonymous Facebook post, a woman from Ireland said that after she had a medical abortion and an internal scan at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, someone left her a suspicious voicemail telling her to schedule another scan. The individual who left the message knew both her name and her address, and later sent a text message with directions to their office, according to the woman’s posts. But Irish news site the Journal reports that the caller did not actually work for the hospital, and it is not known how they allegedly obtained her private information.

'Rats out of the HSE': Protesters want external probe into claims abortion details were leaked
The HSE is probing claims that a woman was phoned and harassed by a man who had obtained her personal information.

Feb 4, 2019

A ‘RATS OUT of the HSE’ protest was staged at the Department of Health’s Baggot Street office in Dublin today, calling for better protection of patient information and for an external investigation to be launched into last week’s revelations of apparent data breaches.

A number of investigations were launched last week into claims that a woman who had an abortion at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin was phoned and harassed by a man who had obtained her personal information.